Research SpotlightVideo Series

The Barcelona GSE Research Spotlight Video Series profiles the dynamic research findings of Affiliated Professors, giving a multimedia perspective of the cutting-edge research being done in the GSE community across a broad range of topics in economics.

Share this page:

From shame to game in 100 years: an economic model of the rise in premarital sex and its destigmatization

Prof. Nezih Guner (ICREA-UAB and Barcelona GSE) develops an economic model of the rise in premarital sex and its destigmatization.

Nezih Guner ICREA-UAB and Barcelona GSE

Recent Interviews

The Economics of HappinessDoes earning a higher salary really make a person happier? Not permanently, according to Professor Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell. Her research in happiness economics has shed new light on what determines a person's happiness, particularly the effects of income changes and other life events on subjective satisfaction.

Stock Market Volatility and LearningProfessor Albert Marcet discusses his pioneering research showing that simple models of learning can explain what appear to be puzzles from the viewpoint of the (fully) rational expectations literature.

"Never before have so few owed so much to so many"Prof. Xavier Freixas (UPF and Barcelona GSE) plays on the famous words of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to explain the impact of bank bailouts on taxpayers during the recent global financial crisis.

Decentralizing Equality of OpportunityHow can individual policymakers achieve social justice at both the macro and micro level when addressing concrete, everyday distributive problems? Professor Caterina Calsamiglia discusses the social justice problem and its implications for effective policy design, particularly in the area of affirmative action.

How Do People Perceive Risk in Everyday Situations?Professor Robin Hogarth uses a novel new methodology to demonstrate that even relatively simple measures of mood state can have a significant effect on perception of risk.

Growth, Democracy, and Civil WarLatest research by Professor Antonio Ciccone reveals a link between downturns of international commodities prices and the outbreak of civil war in Sub-Saharan African countries. Additional analysis suggests that a country's form of government may be a crucial factor in predicting civil war in the case of economic depression.

New Keynesian insights on wages, aggregate demand and unemploymentProf. Jordi Galí (CREI, UPF and Barcelona GSE) illustrates how the central bank's response to inflation conditions the impact that wages have on unemployment.

Ethnicity and conflict: an empirical studyWhat are the causes of civil conflict? On the basis of recent theoretical and empirical research, professors Joan Esteban and Laura Mayoral (IAE and Barcelona GSE) and Debraj Ray (NYU) show that preexisting ethnic divisions do influence social conflict. Their analysis provides evidence that ethnic conflicts are likely to be instrumental, i.e, driven by political or economic reasons, rather than by ancestral hatreds across groups.

Funding for this project was provided by AXA Research Fund and Recercaixa.

Political myopia in times of uncertaintyResearch by Profs. Alessandra Bonfiglioli (IAE and Barcelona GSE) and Gino Gancia (CREI, UPF and Barcelona GSE) provides new evidence that fiscal stabilizations are more likely when economic volatility is high.

The economic engineer comes to the Keynesian Beauty ContestProf. Rosemarie Nagel (ICREA-UPF and Barcelona GSE) uses economic experiments to test a variety of techniques designed to enable players to make better choices and improve their results in the Beauty Contest game.